“Just another game,” Harry Brook declared in an interview with Wisden Cricket Monthly ahead of this Ashes series. “The same ball coming down at me. Just another human bowling a little round leather thing at another human. And I’ve got to hit it with a bit of wood. That’s it, really.”
We can assume that Nasser Hussain’s job at Sky Sports is probably safe for the time being. But in another sense it was a quote that cut to the heart of what has made Brook one of the world’s most devastating players. Playing for England has always come with a certain quantum of baggage attached: historical, cultural, judgmental. But more than any of his current teammates, Brook has the ability to strip away context, to bat without prejudice, to boil the game down its simplest chemical form. That’s not Mitchell Starc; it’s a moving meat spindle covered in white cloth and sun cream. That’s not a scoreboard; it’s a random array of coloured electronic shapes. And this isn’t the most eagerly anticipated Ashes series since 2005, because in 2005 you were six years old and probably sitting on a swing.
